Surviving with Carl
by ShiningLantern
Summary: The journey of a girl and her Hunter.


**I blame my new obsession with Left 4 Dead for not updating my other story. I have my own pet Hunter, Carl, and these are our adventures.  
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I don't know where he came from or how he found me, but he did. Carl wasn't like the others. He was gentler, kinder, them. They would have torn me limb from limb and devoured my flesh. He didn't seem interested in that at all. He did have a temper and an attitude but with the right tone of voice I could keep him in check. I was often met with a growl if I gave him an order. I learned quickly not to back down because he would listen if I held long enough.

It was hard figuring out how we were going to eat. I just wanted food while he had an insatiable hunger for meat of any kind. Most of the grocery stores and such had been looted a long time ago. The once fluorescently lit buildings were now dark and dingy. Shelves laid overturn like giant, elaborate dominos. Remnants of their former contents strewn about on the dirt caked floor. Still, it wouldn't hurt to look, to take a chance.

I stock up on ammo, health packs, and pain pills before even thinking about opening the door to our safe house. It was a room I'd found in some building a while back. The door was thick and heavy and kept me in while keeping everything else out. Carl stayed in the safe house with me. I know it sounds crazy to lock yourself in a room with a zombie, but after said zombie saves your life, stands guard outside of your door to make sure you're okay, and runs away to go hunting so that he won't eat you, I think it's alright to let him in.

It had taken a while before I was able to sleep peacefully knowing Carl was around. He wasn't one of the undead zombies of fantasy and fiction that I had grown up loving and fearing. Carl was the result of some kind of chemical war apocalypse that I had survived for whatever reason God wanted me to. He was what was an infected. There were millions of people that were infected after the incident but a small percent of them changed the way Carl did. He was what known as a hunter, a type of special infected. Besides the Common Infected, which were just angry, bloody people, Hunters were the most human. Carl, like most other hunters, no longer had eyes but empty sockets of dried blood, and his fingers and nails had been morphed into semi-long claws for weapons. Carl's hands were permanently blood stained. A reminder of what he could do to me if he wanted to.

With a grunt Carl opened the safe house door for me and held it open. I whispered a quiet "Thank you," as a passed by him. The metal door grated against the ground with an earsplitting tune as he closed the door. He winced. I knew the sound was murder to him. With no eyesight he relied on all his other senses to know what was around him. The lock snapped into place with a clang when the door was completely shut. We were ready to go.

Carl kneeled down in front of me so that could catch a ride piggyback-style like I always did. He could jump, run, scale buildings a thousand times better than I could, so he carried me to save time and to get our errands done faster. I wrapped my arms around his neck and his arms hooked under my knees. Carl turned his head to look back at me. 'Are you ready?' he was asking.

"I'm good to go." I told him. He nodded. Every modified muscle in his body tensed and I held on tighter as he prepared to jump. The first time we did this had, for lack of better words, scared the shit out of me. Flying through the air attached to a hunter is one of the most scarring, horrible, fantastic, funnest things I have ever done. The sensation of being whipped around was a mix of falling in a nightmare and riding the biggest rollercoaster in the park. It was no different this time. The pounding wind against my face forced me to close my eyes and block the dead moon of the night from my sight. "Find the nearest store," I yelled, "Any store. I just need to find food."

I felt him change directions so I held on tighter not wanting to fall off. The wind threaded in and out of my ears, muffling most sound, but I could still hear the gravel under Carl's feet as he landed and ran across roof tops. There was the occasional moan and growl of the Infected in the streets beneath us. Even if there was food down there, it was not worth the fight it would take to get to it.

There was a long decent and then Carl stopped. We'd reached our destination. I slid off his back and stumbled, trying to regain my land legs. Carl's hand gripped the top of my arm and released me when I was balanced again. I checked all the equipment to make sure that none of it had fallen off. Satisfied with my packing skills and started to walk towards the decrepit store that Carl had found. Before I even crossed the threshold he grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back. "What? What's-"Carl placed his hand over my mouth to keep me from talking and held up his other hand to his ear. So I listened.

There was sobbing. It was blood chilling cry that sang of loss, despair, and the end of the world. It was the cry of a witch.


End file.
